


Baby our love is a balancing act

by AlwaysEloise



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alternatively alternatively: both people in a relationship can be mentally ill, Alternatively: Lucas Lallemant has problems too, Bipolar Disorder, Insomnia, M/M, Mental Illness, Seperation Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 11:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18570283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysEloise/pseuds/AlwaysEloise
Summary: Lucas has spent so long worrying about helping Elliot that he forgets sometimes he needs help too.





	Baby our love is a balancing act

It’s 3:00 am on a Wednesday morning and Lucas’ eyes are burning. He’s been staring at the alarm clock for the past god knows how many hours trying to make himself finally sleep. As he watches Elliot rest peacefully beside him he thinks that too much caffeine might be what's keeping him awake and tells himself not to drink any the next day. 

He doesn’t fall asleep until 4:41 am.

***

When 9:00 pm hits on Wednesday night Lucas is exhausted and ready to crawl into bed. Elliot, who is only just starting to come out of a week and a half long depressive episode, doesn’t complain about it one bit.

However an hour later Elliot is once again sleeping peacefully by his side while he is staring intensely at the damn clock. He doesn’t understand what’s preventing sleep from coming, especially when he feels so physically and mentally tired from not getting much the night before. 

He falls asleep somewhere around 4:30 am and when he wakes up for school the next morning a purplish color is starting to bloom underneath his eyes. 

When Mika notices he winks and makes a sly comment about how he must not get much sleep when Elliot is over.

Lucas is too tired to blush.

***

On Thursday Elliot announces that he needs to go home for a few days to see his parents and catch up on some homework that he had neglected during his last episode. Apparently Lucas is too distracting for him to get any proper work done. 

Lucas smiles brightly and kisses him goodbye at the bus station, only letting the tears fall once he’s sure that Elliot’s bus has disappeared out of sight. 

He doesn't understand why he’s crying. 

He doesn’t understand why Elliot leaving makes him feel like he’s suffocating. 

That night he falls asleep at 3:41 am. 

***

On Friday night Lucas manages to fall asleep around 10:00 pm. The only problem in that he wakes up only an hour later. After finally falling back asleep the same thing happens again. The cycle continues until he finally wakes up at 3:00 am and can’t fall back asleep. 

He ends up laying awake, letting his thoughts spiral until they settle on Elliot. He thinks about the fact that he only saw the other boy for a few seconds in between classes that day. For some reason that thought make him feel jittery and nervous. His hands don’t stop shaking until he finally grabs his phone and dials Elliot’s number. 

The phone only rings once before guilt takes over and he hangs up.

Elliot shouldn’t have to lose sleep just because he can’t get his brain to function properly. 

***

On Saturday Lucas and Elliot go on a date. 

All the weird pent up energy that's been building up inside Lucas since they had parted on Thursday diminishes just like that. The night gets even better when Lucas manages to curl up next to Elliot and fall right asleep, not waking up until late morning when the smell of blueberry pancakes drifts into his bedroom. 

As he, Elliot, and Manon sit around the table eating breakfast, he feels relief that the whole awful ordeal is over.

***

On sunday night Lucas doesn’t sleep. 

The next morning when he sees how bad the dark circles have gotten he considers using some of Manon’s concealer to cover them up.

He regrets not doing it when Elliot asks him about them later that day. 

***

On Monday Lucas gets almost a full night's sleep.

On Tuesday he only gets a few hours.

On Wednesday Elliot leaves again and it takes Lucas nearly an hour to get himself to stop crying. Though even after the tears have dried his hands still shake.

He doesn’t sleep at all on Wednesday night. 

***

On Thursday Lucas thinks about finally telling Elliot what’s been going on with him. He knows the other boy would be upset if he found out that Lucas was letting himself suffer in silence like this. Especially since Lucas expects Elliot to tell him when he’s not feeling well. 

He has his finger hovering over the call button when he decides not to do it. 

Elliot has been feeling so good these past few days after all, Lucas isn’t willing to be the one to ruin that. 

(He’s also a little embarrassed. About the crying that is.)

***

He doesn’t sleep on Friday.

***

On Saturday Elliot comes back to the flat.

He’s only there for thirty minutes before they find themselves locked in a screaming match. 

It happens rather quickly. It only takes a little prodding about the dark circles under his eyes and the fact that he keeps dozing off for Lucas, in his sleep deprived state, to snap in anger. And that’s all it takes to make Elliot snap right back. 

Somehow in the middle of their argument the truth about Lucas’ many sleepless nights comes out, which only manages to anger Elliot more. 

He screams about trust and lying. 

Lucas screams back about wanting to protect Elliot and make him happy. 

Elliot tells him that he doesn't need to be protected or coddled like a child and punctuates the statement by grabbing his coat and heading for the door. 

When Lucas realises that Elliot is leaving he feels himself snap in a different way. A way that he's avoided doing in front of Elliot up until now. 

He cries. 

His whole body trembles as he stumbles forward, grabbing onto Elliot’s wrist and dropping to his knees.

His brain is screaming at him to stop Elliot from leaving. That if he does leave he’ll never come back. So he begs him to stay, tells him how sorry he is, lets the sobs fill in the gaps between his words. 

All the anger drains from Elliot’s body as he watches his boyfriend absolutely fall apart in front of him. Concern bubbles up instead and he drops down to his knees next to Lucas and hugs him tightly. 

He whispers sweet nothings in his ear after promising he isn’t going to leave. 

Lucas wishes he could believe him. 

***

They both naively expect things to get better now that Elliot knows what’s going on. 

Of course it’s exactly the opposite.

Lucas is still sleeping just the same except now he has to deal with the worried expression Elliot always seems to wear, especially in the morning.

And he’s only become more extreme every time they have to part, openly letting tears stream down his face and pleading with him softly to stay just one more day. The nervous feeling he gets when he’s away from Elliot has only grown. Sometimes he finds himself struggling to breathe as he watches Elliot’s bus drive away. 

They both know that Lucas is spiraling but neither knows what to do. 

***

Lucas reaches his lowest point on a Wednesday night. 

He comes home feeling guilty after seeing Elliot walk around like a zombie all day. They had texted all night because Lucas hadn’t been able to sleep which meant that Elliot hadn’t gotten much either.

The guilt guides him straight to the medicine cabinet and to an orange bottle with two Valium in it. It’s Manon’s, something her doctor prescribes to her everytime she has to go on a plane. But she cancelled her last trip, which left the two little pills unused. 

He swallows them and falls into bed before he even lets himself think about it.

It’s the best sleep he’s had in weeks.

***

Thursday morning he feels more guilty than he had the night before. 

It takes him less than an hour after waking up to tearfully tell Manon what he had done. 

Everything else that was happening comes pouring out along with his confession and they both end up skipping first period. 

When Lucas finally finishes telling her everything she looks at him with a peculiar expression. 

“Lucas it sounds like you have insomnia. Have you considered talking to a professional about it?”

“No.”

“But why?”

He isn’t willing to let the name Elliot slip off of his tongue so he says nothing instead.

***

The moment when everything changes happens on a sunday afternoon.

Lucas is doing the dishes while Elliot, Manon, Mika, and Lisa are cleaning up the rest of the kitchen from their lunch. 

One second he’s wiping a plate clean and the next he’s lying on the floor with glass shards surrounding him. 

He can hear Mika and Lisa’s panicked voices in the background but his eyes are focused on Elliot and Manon who are kneeling on either side of him. 

Elliot looks terrified, a hand clamped over his mouth and his eyes wide and teary. 

Manon on the other hand looks more furious than Lucas has ever seen her.

“That’s it. You’re getting some damn help whether you like it or not.”

***

Therapy is not a instant fix. 

On his first visit he spends almost two hours spilling his entire life story and only walks out with an official insomnia diagnosis. 

On his second visit he walks away with a recommendation for melatonin, which he quickly finds doesn’t do much for his sleep problems. 

On his third visit he comes out with some breathing techniques and guided meditation videos that he immediately writes off as useless.

On his fourth visit he’s gifted a scheduled appointment for the clinic’s psychiatrist and a diagnosis of separation anxiety and the knowledge that his parents probably left him with some deep seeded abandonment issues. 

On his first visit to his psychiatrist he walks away with a low and probably temporary prescription for Ativan that actually works.

On his fifth visit to his therapist he walks away ready to finally talk to Elliot.

***

Unsurprisingly Elliot is extremely hurt.

It spirals into a fight fairly quickly.

They talk first.

“I didn’t want to be a burden to you, you already have enough going on.”

Then they yell.

“My disorder doesn’t mean that I can’t be there for you Lucas. I’m not a child that you need to protect.”

Then they scream.

“Why is it so fucking horrible of me to want to protect you?”

But eventually it comes full circle back to talking. 

“I’m sorry, I know I should’ve told you. I was scared and I didn’t want to make anything more difficult for you.”

“You have to let me help you Lucas. We’re a team, we have to be there for each other. It can’t just be you doing all the heavy lifting in this relationship. You understand that right?”

Lucas is trying really hard to understand that.

***

Later that night when they come down from the high of their argument they both crawl into bed, curling up next to each other.

With the combined force of a prescription drug and Elliot’s arm wrapped around his waist Lucas finds himself sleeping easy that night.


End file.
